I pride myself on having excellent map and navigation skills, but I made a big error on a solo hike across Utah’s San Rafael Swell, a jumble of sandstone and limestone folded into hundreds of valleys and canyons. The Swell is impossible to capture entirely on a map, because serious mischief hides between the contour lines. While traversing, I accidentally ended up a mile away from, and hundreds of feet above, my intended location. I should have backtracked the two or three miles to where I went astray. But it was November, daylight was dwindling, and a winter storm was descending. Instead of retracing my steps, I tried a more direct route to a preplotted location on my GPS and encountered a cliff that I didn’t see on the topo. I almost made a much bigger mistake while scrambling around it—solo, and off my intended route. I avoided serious injury, but spent a cold night in a snowstorm.

Sponsored: After looking at a map and seeing where you’re heading, it’s always amazing to see it appear up ahead of you in real life. Here’s our Editor-in-Chief hiking to two unnamed tarns near the headwaters of Lime Creek, about 3.5 miles west of Molas Pass on the Colorado Trail. Continued thanks to Mountain Hardwear for making the #ColoradoTrailFest come to life. #LiveBreatheHike #MountainHardwear Photo By Kennan Harvey